For example, in a process for forming a circuit pattern and the like on a workpiece, such as a glass substrate for liquid crystal display devices and a wafer for semiconductor devices, it is necessary to perform various processing steps on the workpiece. Thus, a so-called multi-chamber system is proposed, in which a plurality of processing chambers are provided to perform processing in each chamber simultaneously or successively.
In processing a workpiece in a multi-chamber system, a robot apparatus receives an unprocessed workpiece from a supply unit and supplies the workpiece to a processing chamber. After the workpiece is processed in the processing chamber, the robot apparatus receives the workpiece from the processing chamber and hands it over to the next processing chamber or transfers it to another processing unit, for example.
Here, to improve productivity in such processing, a robot apparatus capable of rapidly receiving and supplying a workpiece is proposed (see Patent Document 1).
However, recently, further improvement in productivity has been required in fields being in high demand and requiring volume production, such as the field of semiconductor devices including nonvolatile semiconductor memory elements. Thus, even the technique as disclosed in Patent Document 1 has problems from the viewpoint of productivity improvement.    Patent Document 1: JP-A-H11-135600